[AISWorld] Plagiarism

[Bob McQueen]

Robert Davison's thoughtful proposal, and the responses of several others 
so far (Kock, Loebbecke) will ensure an interesting discussion over the 
coming weeks on plagiarism issues associated with article submission to 
journals.

I have two thoughts to contribute.

First, the proposal seems to set up journal editors as judge and jury in 
deciding on the guilt and punishment of plagiarisers. To ensure justice and 
fairness, and legal protection both to those accused and those making the 
accusations, there will need to be an extensive, fair and watertight 
decision system, and an appeal system (with a panel of academics and 
lawyers to review contested cases), and an appeal to the appeal decision 
system, and so on with some cases likely entering the the traditional legal 
systems, both in the US and elsewhere. In my opinion, this will be a 
ponderous and ultimately unsuccessful way to address the problem, and will 
have huge legal liability implications for those involved in making 
judgements.

Secondly, I would suggest that the proposed effort to identify and punish 
plagiarisers be redirected to developing guidelines for professional 
practice in the submission of academic articles to journals and 
conferences. Our university, like many, has a detailed set of ethics 
guidelines for academic research involving human beings, which graduate 
students must read and understand, and demonstrate their understanding and 
alignment of their research with those guidelines through an application 
for ethics approval prior to undertaking their research. That system works 
pretty well.

An open wiki, moderated by a panel of AIS journal editors, might be a great 
way to collaboratively develop guidelines for preparation and submission of 
academic articles which might avoid "plagiarism through ignorance" in most 
cases. The wiki would help to achieve the end goal of reducing plagiarism, 
and clarify (eventually) through discussion the varying perceptions about 
what constitutes plagiarism in which circumstances, and create one 
consistent, living reference document. AIS journal and conference PCs could 
then require submitters to have read the wiki guidelines and attest that 
their article follows those guidelines.

Bob McQueen
Professor of Electronic Commerce Technologies
University of Waikato
Hamilton, New Zealand